Building the Bottom Line

Home performance contractors are often excellent mechanics and artists, ever driven to deliver a high-quality product, but they sometimes lack expertise in business management. No business can flourish without well thought-out systems for marketing, sales, and estimating, yet home performance contractors frequently overlook these three important systems. I have been coaching and advising contractors for 15 years on business management, and I have observed this phenomenon all too often. I can attest that when these systems perform well, a contractor may need more crews and an even greater devotion to management systems.The successful contractor will need to pay more attention to job cost accounting, training and personnel management, sales management, contact management, and more to handle the growth created by a steady flow of profitable business. When these systems don’t perform well, that same contractor may get stuck with jobs that drain away all of his or her time and energy, yet yield little or no profit. After a successful career as an awardwinning contractor (Remodeling magazine’s Big 50, Qualified Remodeler magazine’s Top 500), I saw my volume shrink by 70% in one month—...